CodyÕs Cats Ôon their guardÕ for Galway test

Dara Bradley

KILKENNY hurling team manager Brian Cody pauses briefly before answering. “Ah gee,” he says. Another pause.

You can almost picture him pondering tentatively down the phone line wondering what would be the most diplomatic reply to the question ‘how many of the current Galway players would make Kilkenny’s current starting 15’.

“I wouldn’t think like that at all to be honest. I mean if you go through the Galway team they just have excellent hurlers right through the field. It would be very easy to be rattling off names of individual Galway players but I mean I wouldn’t look at individuals. I’d look at the overall team. The reality is Galway are as good as Kilkenny, Kilkenny are as good as Galway and this game is totally up for grabs.”

It’s the week of the Leinster Championship final and the wily boss who steered Kilkenny to four All-Ireland titles in the last four years, seven in all, is hardly going to say anything that might provide motivation to the Galway camp.

Cody is aware too that Galway was the last team to beat Kilkenny in championship hurling, way back in 2005, in a nine-goal shoot-out thriller.

And he is aware that Galway is the only team to beat Kilkenny twice (Galway also came out on top in 2001) in the championship since his first championship campaign with the county in 1999. But he doesn’t consider Galway as Kilkenny’s ‘bogey’ team – an oxymoron if ever there was one – and prefers to look forward, not back.

“They managed to beat us in two All-Ireland semi-finals all right. They came out well on top in both those matches to be honest but we’ve obviously beaten them since as well. All those things are irrelevant unless you get it right on the day.

“We’ve gone on a great run since (the 2005 defeat to Galway) and you go on them runs as long as you can but it’s going to stop and we’d be hoping it doesn’t stop next Sunday. We’ll be going out taking on the game; last year and the year before is done and dusted. They’re not giving any satisfaction to anyone now because the challenge now is Sunday.”

The bad news for fans of the Tribesmen is Cody and his selectors Martin Fogarty and Michael Dempsey have a full squad to choose from now that James ‘Cha’ Fitzpatrick and John Tennyson have recovered from injury and were back at training last week.

The other bad news is that ‘pub talk’ of the ideal scenario for Galway when the Leinster championship draw was made – beat Wexford and Offaly and maybe catch Kilkenny on the hop in the final – isn’t really a runner either. Cody says his charges are on their guard.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.